It's the Stephen Kenny Thread

I'm delighted but not overly surprised the senior players backed him. If they were being selfish Coleman arguably could have had more of an axe to grind with Kenny than Duffy or Brady regarding game time but it's a testament to his character as the team captain to back his manager when he's under pressure after a poor Nations League campaign. 

From the outside looking in, I think Kenny has handled the players very well since day 1 and even went out of his way to acknowledge/mention players like Christie when asked about the Coleman/Doherty dilemma in a previous interview. 

He's brought in players out from the cold such as Arter and the players who I didn't think should be anywhere near the squad like Horgan and Curtis who gave a good account of themselves. Curtis himself could've had two goals this campaign. He was unlucky in Finland and should've at least got it on target against Bulgaria. 

Hopefully Kenny's vindication tonight and a half decent world cup draw in two weeks with a favourable second seed will set us up nicely for March. 

He'll be kept on as long as there are signs of improvement and that things are heading the right way.

In his first 5 games I saw great signs and thought things were getting better even though the results were not good.  The team were passing well in tight area, not panicking, some good ball retention and some clever worked moves were to be seen here and there.

Then the last 3 games were a major step back.  I'm not talking about results.  The performances dipped and regressed badly.  There was much less passing and sloppy passing when there was. There was long balls here there and everywhere.  Bad team selections (Hourihane) and baffling substitutions.  That's the worrying bit for me.  Either the players are not listening to his instructions or Kenny has now decided to go more route 1 which is against the very reason he was brought in in the first place.  If he isn;t going to implement good football we may as well go back to Mick.

Given the huge amount of criticism SK was getting on here post Bulgaria home, I would think a very small portion of posters used this to back up their footballing analysis of Kenny. 

We pretty much had a full XI of Premier League Players missing for this window so I wouldn't be as critical. 
 

Would make you wonder was he one of those with an issue and tbh if he has no issue with management and has made no effort to clear that up he’s an idiot. I get it was an off the cuff Twitter post so maybe he didn’t engage his brain and think “yeah might be no harm to clear it up I have no issue with management also” but still if something like that is leaked about me having an issue with management and I genuinely have no issue the first thing I do is call out the media/confirm otherwise and he actually hasn’t just “he didn’t leak anything”

Sensible comments from Kerr.